NEWS: Nissan will make parts for the R33 and R34 Skyline GT-R again

Last year Nissan announced to great fanfare the first phase of its Heritage Parts program. Through its NISMO division, the company would re-issue parts for the R32 Skyline GT-R, and if the program was successful enough Nissan would expand the program to other models as well. Response must have been good, because today Nissan announced that Heritage Parts would now include R33 and R34 Skyline GT-R models.

As with the R32, the initial parts list is small. The R33’s includes mostly hoses and lines, but also specialized parts like air guides for the brakes, headlamp seals, and window regulators. Impressively, an entire new front bumper cover is available as it was for the R32.

For the R34, Nissan will offer select hoses and lines as well, in addition to seals for the body work and a turn signal assembly. Many of these items are required to pass Japan’s strict Shaken inspections.

The R32 has the most extensive parts catalog, which makes sense considering it’s the oldest model. Newly added parts include bumper reinforcements and power window switches. That’s on top of everything from wiring harnesses to a metal sleeve for the speedometer cable.

It’s exciting to see that NISMO Heritage Parts wasn’t just a one model burst, and that Nissan believes in the program enough to expand it to other models. While some prices are steep, many of these items are very limited in production and not mass produced like when the cars were new. The parts are available for order at NISMO retailers in Japan. For a full list of available parts, see the NISMO website.

11 Responses to NEWS: Nissan will make parts for the R33 and R34 Skyline GT-R again

Brilliant – it’s what I’ve been trying to get over to Subaru for their earlier models. Enthusiasts are prepared to pay fairly robust prices for parts to restore their prized possessions (or at least theirs for an all-too-brief period of custodianship). In many cases these companies still have the original molds for the parts, so are in the best position to reproduce them – and make money in doing so. Win-Win.

Unfortunately its not as simple as dusting off the old molds and bringing them back into service. The molds used originally such as for injection molded composite parts, were designed to last for a specific cycle time, or for a set number of production units plus 3-5 years to supply dealerships with replacements.

After that, parts are obsoleted, tools are past their life span, and destroyed to make way for the latest and greatest.

I like what Nissan is trying to do, hopefully it spreads across different vehicle platforms. They might as well support the great vehicles they use to produce since we’ll never see anything new from them worth restoring someday.

I’m actually surprised no one is making a licensed copy of the R34 GT-R, considering it’s such a hot item at the moment. Though we can dream or just write up some fictional world and maybe make a best-seller.

The range of pulls from general steel tooling is anywhere from 300k to one million, depending on the grade of steel used and the material molded. The total number of GTR models from the R32-R34 generations was a little less that 100k units (this number does exclude the other trim levels from those years) so I doubt they reached their expected usability. In all likelyhood it’s really as simple as Nissan not wanting to pay to store all of those blocks of steel. When they end production on a model, they usually don’t see the need to let it all collect dust so they destroy them or sell them off to someone else (I think this is what Ford did with Dynacorn).

We may collectively say Nissan but is not Nissan contracting out to smaller vendors? I believe the supply chain for Japanese industries is vastly different from what we know of here in the U.S. Another perception is that U.S. manufacturers tout the “Toyota” method but in reality, they cherry picked what they wanted from the system without embracing the total concept ( making for good marketing to Wall Street. Yes, that’s you Boeing…).

i believe companies still continue to produce parts for them, wear & tear parts. maybe not Nissan, maybe not their original contractors, but like many other 3rd party OEM manufacturers there are bound to have companies still producing them, as long as there’s still demands for them. GT-R’s aren’t as rare maybe in some countries but they are popular in tuner’s market so surely if you are willing to pay the price you can still get new parts without going to custom makers, talking about wear & tear parts.